3 Ways to Promote Your YouTube Channel

3 Ways to Promote Your YouTube Channel

Last week, Jill McVey addressed how business owners should approach creating a YouTube channel for their company. The importance of YouTube in 2016 is predicated on its standing as the world’s second-largest search engine. YouTube also offers novice developers easy-to-use mechanics, while additionally providing amateur filmmakers a platform to entertain. But above all, YouTube gives everybody the potential to go viral and claim their 15 minutes of fame.

For business application, going viral probably isn’t feasible for most companies, but they should at least make a concerted effort to maintain their channel and reward its subscribers. While many businesses solely use their YouTube channel as a device for embedding relevant videos onto their site, its potential goes untapped in these instances. People frequently search on YouTube for instructions or information, and well-maintained channels are rewarded and come up first in these searches. When you neglect your channel, you’re forfeiting all of its potential to bring in business from YouTube.

The first step is to have engaging videos on the site and to continue adding more as the channel matures. But without proper promotion, these videos will sadly go little-watched. Here are 3 steps for promoting your YouTube channel:

Promote channel across newsletters: If your company distributes an online newsletter, this could be a perfect place to link to your YouTube channel. Due to the extensive distribution lists for many email marketing campaigns, this can be a fast, effective way to drive up subscribers.

Use your channel’s videos in blogs or site content: Text can only go so far in communicating information. The phrase “a picture’s worth a thousand words” rings true here. An easy way to improve your website’s content is to complement your site’s text with video in a fun and dynamic way. “How to” videos are considerably popular because it’s far easier for people to learn how to do certain things when there’s a visual component to it, in addition to a text.

Have a “Call to Action” in video: While it may seem like a cheap and somewhat lazy way to drive up subscribers, there’s a reason why even YouTube’s biggest channels have call to actions. Most people wouldn’t typically hit “subscribe” or hit “thumbs up” button after seeing a video no matter how helpful it was. But if you ask them at the end of the video, they may reward you if it was a quality video.

It’s essential for sites with video content from YouTube to optimize their videos for search. This way, Google will be able to pull these videos up in searches. There are also good practices for optimizing YouTube’s channel for YouTube searches. This includes using key-word rich descriptions listed below each video title on YouTube search pages.